


your hair was long when we first met (i loved you first)

by videcormeum



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Haircuts, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Inspired by Music, Lazy Mornings, Murder Husbands, One Shot, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter, they just love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29261307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/videcormeum/pseuds/videcormeum
Summary: Residing in a safe house months after the fall, Will cuts Hannibal's hair and has a lot of thoughts.Inspired by 'Samson' by Regina Spektor.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 72





	your hair was long when we first met (i loved you first)

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve gotta be honest with you, i got really sad, rewatched twotl, listened to ‘samson’ by regina spektor a lot and wrote this instead of going to therapy. the title is taken from the song, and the entire thing is modelled on it. [i’d definitely recommend listening to it before/while you read!](https://youtu.be/QWYUC5EMfyI)  
> ok, that’s all from me folks. enjoy :)

_I cut his hair myself one night,  
_ _A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light,  
_ _And he told me that I'd done alright,  
_ _And he kissed me ‘til the morning light._

* * *

Will Graham doesn’t dream.

Waking is no longer a gasping fight for consciousness, but an easy greeting. He feels it first, the brush of a soft pillow case against his cheek, the slight tingling of his right arm beneath an old scar. He has formed a strange camaraderie with it’s residual ache, and lazily rubs the feeling back into his hand.

The sun is low on the horizon, and he doesn't care for the time besides that. It casts pinstripe lines of light across the sheets that time never could, and he runs a palm across them. Warmth lingers on the crumpled fabric.

“Will.”

Heat-pink skin, undoubtedly damp to the touch, fills the doorway. Hannibal holds a plush towel around his waist with one hand, and a pair of silver-handled scissors in the other. He doesn’t say _I need help._

Will sits up and holds out both hands for the scissors. The bed dips towards Hannibal’s weight when he sits, and naturally shifts Will closer to his naked warmth. He pulls the towel up onto his shoulders and waits.

It’s clear where the problem is. Will runs his fingers through the uneven damp hair at the back of Hannibal’s head and trims it even. Curls give Will an advantage to cutting the back of his own, but Hannibal's fine hair is not so forgiving.

For months, Will had watched his cropped state hospital hair begin to curl around his ears and rebel against product. He had watched him push it back and blow it out of his face, had threaded his own fingers through it and tugged just to see the response.

He’d cut it then, when Hannibal had not-asked. At the hospital, they had _sheared_ him monthly. Will had stroked fingers from his temple to his chin and allowed the strands to float to their feet. Scissors in hand, he had stripped away years of confinement and left it to the bathroom floor.

He snips the short strands around Hannibal’s ears, and checks that the top is still long enough to scrape back as Hannibal likes. 

“You need to invest in a barber,” he says, and uses two fingers to turn Hannibal’s head to the side. It’s slightly neater there, where Hannibal could see in the mirror. He trims it anyway.

Hannibal’s eyes are closed. “Why would I, when you do the job so well?”

“You just like having my hands on you for this long.”

He dips his head, a little. “Guilty as charged.”

“Quit moving. I’m almost done.”

“So soon?” Hannibal asks, but stills dutifully. 

Will makes one more pass over with the scissors and tosses them onto the nightstand. Hannibal doesn’t move. Will drags his fingers from his hairline to his nape, only half-checking the length.

Hannibal lets out a stuttered breath, and Will lets him go. He bundles up the towel with the hair that had fallen onto it and tosses it towards the laundry basket before lying back down.

The bed dips again, and Hannibal lies with him. Will presses a fingertip to his shoulder and waits for the patch to turn from white to pink. Hannibal watches, does not speak.

He is perfectly still under Will’s palm as it skims up the damp arc of his neck and slots against the curve of his jaw. 

_You think you love him, but you don’t._ Alana had told him once, in her clinically clipped tone. A diagnosis. A death sentence, perhaps.

He dips his thumb into the scar carved into Hannibal’s cheekbone and thinks _I love you. God, I love you. I would die for you again and again and again. All you have to do is ask._

“What’s on your mind, Will?”

Scar tissue is smoother than uninjured skin. It gives a little beneath Will’s thumb, but always bounces back. “You don’t have to ask me about my thoughts, Hannibal.”

“I suppose I don’t.” Hannibal’s cheek shifts under Will’s hand in a smile. “I sometimes wonder from whose mind my thoughts truly originate.”

Will blinks, and they are in a chapel in Italy. Blood seeps from the skeleton’s head and ribs and turns Will’s skin sticky. A beating heart is clutched in it’s clasped hands.

He blinks again, and the tile fades to linen. Sunlight streaks across their bedroom and cuts Hannibal’s face perfectly in half. He traces its path with a fingertip. “Does it matter?”

“You and I may never live as individuals again,” Hannibal says, barely at the volume of a shallow breath. “Does that thought scare you?”

The dip of his cupid's bow feels more defined beneath Will’s thumb. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been an individual. I don’t think it ever scared me, not really. How could it?”

Hannibal purses his lips, ever so slightly, so that they brush against the pad of the thumb tracing his mouth. _“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And, sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could.”_

A smattering of stubble on his jawline brushes Will’s fingertips. It might have once been uncharacteristic, but as Hannibal smiles and presses Robert Frost into his skin and _loves him,_ it can only be perfect. Perfect for now.

Perfect _is_ now. Perfect is who they are, right now. Who they were is barely a fleeting memory, and who they will be does not matter. Ships, floating silently in the ocean of a shared consciousness.

He shuts his eyes and lets them pass. Hannibal breathes steadily beneath his palm. Their ribcages move as one, and he surrenders himself to sleep once more, knowing that Hannibal will watch over him.

Will Graham doesn’t dream. He has no use for it.

* * *

_You are my sweetest downfall,  
I loved you first, I loved you first._


End file.
